Google grants $1 million to Indian non-profit AI startup Karya

Google has granted $1 million grant to Indian AI non profit startup Karya for supporting people in rural areas and democratising AI.

Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org has announced a $1 million grant for non-profit AI startup, Karya which gives employment in rural areas in exchange for feedback to improve language abilities of local AI models. Karya will also be building a multilingual AI chatbot to support people with digital work. 

A press release making the announcement said that a prototype of the chatbot was already in use in Ethiopia. 

The startup has helped over 50,000 people in rural India in the past two years by offering them data annotation jobs. Of these, 90 percent were from marginalised communities. Karya aims to bring AI-enabled economic opportunities to over 100,000 people by the end of this year.  

“At Karya, we believe that low-income communities around the world are not only excellent beneficiaries of AI, but they are also excellent builders of AI. We want to use AI to bring earning and learning opportunities to low-income communities across the Global South.

From building speech datasets in local Indic languages and evaluating LLM performance to annotating text, image and video datasets, Karya’s workers enable cutting-edge AI innovations across the world. Our workers can access these meaningful digital work opportunities through their smartphones, earning 20 times the local minimum wage while building skills and transforming their futures,” said co-founder and CEO of Karya, Manu Chopra.

Last month, at the Google for India event, the company said they were launching an initiative to empower 10 million Indians with AI training while announcing a $4 million grant to Central Square Foundation to train 5 million students, teachers and parents on the technology. 

 “We’ve been deeply encouraged to see Karya share this commitment, and are now proud to support its new chapter in nurturing both aptitude and appetite as it brings AI opportunities to underserved communities, and helps ensure the benefits of this revolutionary technology are truly universal,” Alex Diaz, head of AI for social good at Google.org said.